Good to Know

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) may be the single best marketing technique available to an e-commerce business. Why spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on search engine marketing when you can be at the top of the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) for free? How do you do this, you ask? With a little time, effort, and basic concepts to consider while designing and marketing your site, it can be quite simple.

Helpful information below:

Due to search engine trade secrets and algorithms, this information, for the most part is accurate but may not be fully correct.

Site Content- If you want your site to be about franchises for sale, you’re definitely not going to talk about trading stock or exporting bananas to Brazil. Keep your site content relevant with the theme you choose.

Links-

Internal Links (links from one page to another page within your website)- Navigation is key. Never lead a web user into a dead end. Always have multiple links to a page. Search engines give you credit for internal links within your website.

Inbound Links- Very critical. The more you have the better. The more relevant links the better. You cannot be punished if you have links from “shady” neighborhoods. As a webmaster you have no control of links to you. Links from higher PR’s (page ranks) also validate the importance and/or relevance of a website. There is discussion of whether or not PR actually influences SERPS or not but I think it helps in matters of relevancy if links are to/from another website with a higher PR.

Outbound Links- Outbound links to relevant sites are important. Unlike inbound links, with outbound links you have complete control of who you link to. Again, if your website is about franchises for sale, do not link to a site about sports, fruit etc.



Anchor Text of Links- For the links above, the anchor text is critical. Anchor text is the text used within the link. For example “Franchises for sale” links to a page at The Business Market website. Use anchor text that is relevant to site content. Using relevant text increases keyword ranking for the webpage the anchor text is linking to.

New Content and Updated Pages- New content and updated pages causes search bots to index a website more often. This means constantly moving up in SERPS if everything is done right.

Web User Activity- Once a website shows up in the SERPS a user can find it. Depending on whether or not the website “tickles the users fancy” the users activity within the site matters. These factors include: how long the user stays within a site and how “deep” or how many pages the user goes.





These are basic concepts to consider while running a website. Follow these and you’ll do alright.

Additional factors to consider:
-Bots have a hard time reading java and flash.
-Size (kb) of individual webpage
-Number of pages within a site
-Sitemap
-Alt tags
-Meta tags
-Title tags
-h1, h2 tags



Soon you’ll Optimize with the best of them!